Review by Ian Keogh
Top 10 is the commonly applied name for the tenth precinct of a trans-dimensional police force covering alternate universes, located in Neopolis, once the city of the future, now distinctly fraying around the edges. It’s the collision point for a massive super powered population broadened well beyond masks and capes to sentient animals and robots. In this sprawling diorama the crimes might be familiar, but the circumstances rarely are.
Our way into the confusion is via Robyn Slinger, assigned to Top 10 after graduating from the academy, with her speciality being controlling miniature robotic devices. She’s partnered with Smax, an invulnerable behemoth who fires energy beams from his chest and whose grumpiness borders on offensive. Just about the only predictable aspect of Top 10 is Robyn’s kindly personality eventually breaching Smax’s emotional defences.
Alan Moore’s approach was very much influenced by 1980s TV drama Hill Street Blues, which delivered the plot and action demanded by police series, but placed greater emphasis on an extremely diverse set of characters. The precinct’s sergeant is a dog in a specially constructed mechanical suit enabling him to walk upright. Other officers include a woman who senses via colour and smell, a Satan-worshipper, a shrinking pathologist and a woman able to walk through walls. Every cast member has a distinct personality informing whatever situation they’re placed in.
The background work is immense, yet pales beside the art combination of Zander Cannon and Gene Ha who have to bring that background to life. Cannon provides layouts for Ha, and the resulting pages are a succession of smooth storytelling, yet allowing for individual panels packed with detail. This doesn’t just require designing a functional main cast, but dozens of extras for street scenes and that’s before considering the architecture and advertising, all of which is individual. Moore, Cannon and Ha even take the trouble to ensure recurring background characters in the precinct house, officers seen, but never featured. It’s an opportunity for some visual jokes, such as William Shakespeare wandering the corridors.
With the main cast efficiently introduced in the opening chapter, they’re followed in assignment pairs over the remainder. Cases include the murder of prostitutes, teenage mutant thugs, the equivalent of Godzilla hitting town, and even the arrival of Santa Claus. The situations build slowly, with some inflating into existential threats, and some carried over into Book 2. Eccentric supporting characters also recur, another tip from the Hill Street Blues handbook. The Negotiator is great, but best is a cab driver with zen senses who trusts the cab to get people where they’re needed, whether or not it’s where they want to go.
Top 10 is still very fresh, funny and entertaining, and seems effortlessly clever, which is because although relatively trivial compared to Moore’s earlier output, the same conceptual preparation is applied. Smax is at first just a grumpy lump, but there’s actually much to be revealed about him, and someone who’s enjoyed this a dozen times can still notice something new, such as the running lawyer jokes.
Later editions of Top 10 combine this with Book 2, or as of 2023 there’s a hardcover Compendium uniting both with Season Two and other associated projects.
